by Amelia Jade
***
Later that day, as he sat in a small ten-by-ten cell in the Keydn mansion complex which served as the home base for the entire LMC, Darren found himself with plenty of time to think. A great many thoughts ran through his mind, but in the end, all the paths led back to one thing.
Kierra.
It seemed only natural to think of her as he lay languishing, surrounded on three sides by solid rock hundreds of feet thick, and a metal cage on the other with bars six inches in diameter. There was no fooling around when it came to securing a shifter. Darren wasn’t getting out unless someone electronically unlocked the door from the outside.
Part of him was of course worried about where she was and if she was okay. There was nothing he could do about that though. Instead his mind wandered, thinking about where things had been going, and of how they might have ended up. The night before the two of them had been free to express themselves with each other. Without reservation, without nervousness. Just two people who genuinely wanted to be with each other exploring the other’s likes, wants, needs, and learning all that they could in the intimacy of their embrace.
The freedom of that memory was a stark contrast to his current predicament. He snorted at the irony. His thoughts ran farther than just the night before, delving deep into the hopes and dreams he had possessed before being locked away. Dreams that had come to involve Kierra with regularity.
He wanted her. So did his bear. He wanted to be with her, to the point that he ached not having her next to him, ready to squeeze his hand if he needed it or tell him exactly what she thought without beating around the bush. She was a straight shooter, and he adored that.
A clang of shifting metal interrupted his thoughts.
“Gabriel?” he asked incredulously as the leader of the Stone Bears appeared in front of his cell, the door recessing into the wall to let him in and closing behind him.
“Okay, you have a very short period of time to explain to me why you beat up three of my men today,” the bigger shifter said, his voice icily calm.
Darren’s jaw almost dislocated itself it dropped open so fast.
“Your men?” he exclaimed in a strangled voice.
“Yes, my men. They’re part of the new Sentinel program. An expansion of the Stone Bears. And you took out three of them today according to reports. I want to know why.”
Darren stared at Gabriel for several seconds, then his eyes narrowed. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” the other replied.
“Figures that Nash wouldn’t tell you the truth,” Darren said, shaking his head in disgust. “Nash used your men as goons. Hired muscle, basically. I got a call this morning from the girl I’m seeing, Kierra. She’s running for town mayor. Someone had thrown a rock through her window and…”
By the time Darren finished speaking, Gabriel was full of more rage than he had been when he walked in. This time though it was focused at Nash and the men he had thought were loyal to him, not Darren.
“Are any of your men off base at the moment?” Darren asked, suddenly realizing the resource he had in front of him.
Gabriel nodded. “We have thirty men training here at the moment. A total of fifteen left today at the request of Nash, without checking with me. One of them you killed, but the other fourteen left again after filing their reports. That’s why I came to see you, because something was going on and I needed to know what. I just figured it was you who had screwed up. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“We need to find Kierra,” Darren said.
“Not to worry there. I know where they are.”
“You do?” Darren exclaimed.
“I do. I have a cabin in the woods. She’s up there with Uriel.”
Darren was taken aback. “What? How do you know this, and how did Uriel get to be involved?” Clearly something had happened he was unaware of.
“Apparently your girl is pretty resourceful. When she couldn’t get ahold of you she called here, pretending to be someone else. I’m not sure what happened from there, because I was out, but apparently based on the quick message he sent me Uriel is keeping her safe.”
“I need to see her!” Darren said, moving toward the exit.
“Hold up,” Gabriel told him, laying a restraining arm on his shoulder. “You’re under arrest you know.”
Darren rolled his eyes. “You know that claim is bogus!”
“I know, but if the remaining shifters in the Sentinel program aren’t loyal to me, then the two of us will never make it out of here on our own. Give me some time to get them out of the way. I think a surprise winter training expedition will do perfectly,” he said with a smile that contained no joy. “Just hold tight for a few more hours.”
Chapter Ten
Kierra
“You know, this is entirely fucked up,” she complained.
Uriel nodded, but didn’t say anything. Not that she blamed him either. They had been cooped up in the cabin for several hours now, with no way of contacting the outside world. There was no landline in the cabin, which was unsurprising. Most places these days were eliminating them in favor of cell phones.
Uriel’s phone had died before he even reached Kierra’s house, and they didn’t have a charger. As for her phone, well, it had been left behind in the mad scramble to leave her house.
“I can’t believe I left my damn phone,” she cursed again.
When Kierra had been unable to get in touch with Darren, she needed someone to reach out to. Her brain had replayed the conversation from the night before, when he told her he had gone through a large portion of the Stone Bear training. Later on, in between bouts of sex, he had elaborated, and mentioned Uriel’s name as one of his friends at the time. It had been a longshot, and she had no idea if the two were still close, but thankfully Uriel had still considered Darren a good man. He had rushed down from the mountain to her house, getting there just in time too.
They had been preparing to leave when she had seen some unknown men climb over the fence in her backyard. Yelling at Uriel, the two of them had fled out the front. It had been a close, because two more had been preparing to come in the front door. Uriel had taken a bit of a beating at their hands. She had seen the struggle and subsequent frustration on his face as he tried to fight back, but with only one arm he was severely limited.
She had gotten in his truck, noticing he left the keys, and gunned it. Uriel had disengaged and thrown himself into the bed of the truck while she fled down the street. Only after she was sure they had left their pursuers far enough behind had she slowed down and allowed Uriel into the cab again.
In the panic, however, she hadn’t had time to grab her coat, which was where she had put her phone, in anticipation of them leaving in an orderly manner. It wasn’t her proudest moment, looking back on it now.
“It’s okay,” Uriel assured her. “I did let Gabriel know where we were before my phone died. So he’ll get some help and come join us.”
He frowned. “I wish I’d been able to let him know that bringing any of the Sentinels would be a bad idea though.”
Kierra felt terrible. The realization that Uriel had not only known the attackers, but that he was helping to train them had hurt him almost as much as the frustration of being unable to fight the way he was used to with two arms. She was fairly positive that the lack of an arm had some more deep-seated issues that he wasn’t talking about, but knowing the Stone Bears were compromised was big.
“Someone on the inside knew it before today,” she told him, remembering something that had happened to her.
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply, eyes narrowing.
“For several months now I’ve been receiving short, cryptic messages from someone who works for LMC, informing me of various cover-ups, lies, and other acts of corruption going on inside your company.”
Uriel sat down heavily on the edge of a couch, the wooden frame inside groaning under his weight.
“Continue,” h
e said. She could all but sense the shame and disgust he felt at the company that employed him. There was little in the way of surprise in his voice, which meant that he must have already known about some of the corruption.
“Two days ago, I received another letter. It said that the Sentinel program was being expanded, and that the new shifters were not loyal to you, but to someone else. Does that make sense to you?” Kierra had sensed that there were things going on in the Valley, but she wasn’t clear to what extent.
Uriel sighed, scrunching up his face in a combination of thought and anger. “Yes. But before I explain, I have a question.”
“What?” she asked after he didn’t immediately continue.
“Why you?”
Kierra laughed. “I have no fucking idea. I wish I did. Oh how I wish I did. They started shortly after I announced my intent to run for mayor and the campaign I was running on.”
Uriel frowned. “What campaign was that?” He looked embarrassed when she raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t really follow the goings-on in Origin. It’s never really been relevant to me.”
She nodded in understanding. “I’ve been actively campaigning for more transparency by your company. I want to know more about what’s going on in the inside. Hell, I think we humans should be told what you are mining up there too.”
“That will never happen,” Uriel said simply.
“Why not?” she asked sharply, irritated at his simple dismissal.
“Honestly Kierra, because it’s none of your business, and something that we aren’t at liberty to divulge.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Not at liberty to divulge?”
“Yes. No one who works at LMC is allowed to talk about it. Not even the owners. It’s one of those things that we don’t share. That may change in the future, but I wouldn’t expect it to now.”
“That’s just what I’m campaigning about though! You should have to share.”
Uriel shook his head. “No Kierra, you don’t understand. Unfortunately I can’t exactly explain it myself, but nobody at the LMC has the authority to change that rule. It comes from,” he hesitated, “elsewhere. Sorry, I cannot say more than that.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring,” she said in frustration.
“I can understand. It’s just something that we are unwilling to share with humans at this point. Too much damage to our kind could come about because of it. It’s not like your government has exactly left us in peace since we revealed ourselves,” he said.
Kierra didn’t bother to hide her dismay at the accuracy of his statement. More than one shifter had made claims about horrific treatment and experimentation at the hands of government agencies, and rumors swirled about even nastier events, such as dissection and forced breeding, among others. It was not something she liked to think about.
“Touché,” she said softly, dropping that argument. “But I still want to know more about what’s going on.
“A lot of things have been happening of late,” he began. “Have you noticed all the shifters disappearing over the past few months?”
She nodded, eager for Uriel to continue, to tell her what had been going on behind the scenes that neither she nor the citizens of Origin had been made aware of. As Uriel talked though, outlining to her just how horrific things had been, she began to wonder if getting involved in everything was a mistake. Before she had been scared of what was going on. Now however, as he concluded his story with the fight where he had lost his arm helping to end—what a weird term for “killing someone” she thought—almost the entire Sapphire crew, Kierra found herself petrified of what the future held.
And for the safety of Darren. The man she was quickly realizing had a grip upon her heart. The man she desperately wished was at her side now, to lend his solid strength and calming voice to help soothe the chaos inhabiting her mind. She needed him. In that moment, as the gravity of the situation weighed upon her, Kierra came to the conclusion that she didn’t just want Darren around, but that she needed him next to her. That she was but half of a whole, and that he in some strange way completed her.
But now he was in danger. Danger she had put him in. She knew that his crew was already involved heavily in the goings-on, judging by how often they came up in Uriel’s explanation, but the immediate situation he was in was her fault.
“What’s wrong?” Uriel asked. He must have noticed something on her face.
“It’s my fault.”
“What is?” he asked quizzically.
She wanted to sigh dramatically but it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t follow along with her thoughts. “Darren’s in danger. He’s going to the house as soon as he gets my message. Actually, he’s probably already been to the house by now.”
Uriel nodded, waiting for her to go on.
Now she did sigh. “Uriel there were four large men—shifters according to you—at the house when we left! They’re still going to be there when Darren arrives.”
“Darren is smart, I’m sure he’ll figure it out ahead of time.”
“What if he doesn’t?” she said, wrapping her hands behind her head in nervousness.
“Kierra, Darren does his best to play it down and rarely talks about it, but don’t forget that he went through five years of training to become a Stone Bear. That makes him a very, very dangerous opponent for anyone who tries to best him,” Uriel told her with utter seriousness.
“Is it that intense?” she asked softly.
He smiled. “Before my accident,” he said with a glance at the arm he was missing, “there were probably no more than a handful of bears in the Valley who could have bested me in solo combat. And two of those are Gabriel and Raph.”
She smiled thinly. There was no bragging in his voice, just a quiet confidence in his abilities and training. Everyone in the Valley knew of the Stone Bears and their elite skills, though few believed it, and even fewer had proof.
Uriel fixed her with a stare. “What is going on between you and Darren?” he asked her.
Now it was Kierra’s turn to sit down heavily into the chair. “I have no idea.” She frowned. “No, that’s not true at all. I know what I feel, but I don’t know why or what it means. Does that make sense?”
“He is your mate,” the younger shifter said. Not that he was much more than a couple of years younger than her. Still, she found it funny that he was giving her love advice.
“To a human, that means nothing though,” she said. “We don’t have shifter instincts. So whatever I’m feeling, it makes no sense. It’s far stronger than any attraction I’ve ever felt before. It’s too intimate and easily connected with him. It’s like I can walk on my own, but only with him by my side can I run. It’s... I don’t know!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in frustration. “There is no reason that after a few days I should feel like I’ve spent years with him and want nothing more than to spend all my remaining years with him. That’s not logical!”
“Although I have yet to experience that feeling for myself, I can tell you that it is the sign of a mated pair,” he told her. “I’ve seen it first-hand with Gabriel.”
Something occurred to her.
“I’m not a shifter, but my father was,” she said, her eyes flicking back and forth as she explored the sudden train of thought that had entered her mind. “I always thought that I hadn’t been given any shifter genes. Could I have been wrong? Could the ability to sense a mate still be inside of me?”
Uriel frowned. “I... I do not know. Theoretically I suppose it has to be possible, and judging from your claims and your feelings, it is happening. I’m not sure we could ever prove it though,” he said.
“I don’t need it proven. Just making sure that someone else thinks it makes sense is enough for me. I was never in doubt of the way I felt for him. Just the fact that it happened so quickly and so powerfully. That’s what’s caught me off guard. Is keeping me off guard.”
She shook her head. “I wish he was here.”
Uri
el smiled. “He’ll be here soon enough I’m sure.”
As if on cue, they heard a vehicle pull up and a door slam closed.
“See, there he is now,” Uriel said confidently, getting up to go unlock the door. “It’s probably him and Gabriel.”
She smiled up at him, relief rippling through her system. Darren would know what to do. With him at her side, she knew she would be safe.
That smile was still on her face as the door exploded inward under a single hit from the outside. She yelled in horror as the thick wooden slab quite literally flew across the room. The base of it hit the stool of a nearby chair and it flipped viciously through the air until it impaled itself in the far wall. Thankfully the sitting area was mostly off to one side and neither she nor Uriel were in the path of destruction. If they were, she knew that would have been the end of one Kierra Valcke. Uriel may have survived, but not her.
“Shit!” she yelled, scrambling up from her seated position as men dressed in black military gear poured inside.
How the fuck did they find us?
It didn’t matter at that moment, because they were suddenly outclassed. Four men piled through the door and arrayed themselves in front of the two of them. Uriel backed away, putting his one arm out, motioning for her to get behind him. The men at the door simply stood and waited. They knew they were at an advantage, and the longer Uriel and Kierra stood still, the easier things would be for them.
The odds were not good. Their escape in the morning had been as much luck as anything. They had managed to surprise their attackers, overwhelming them that way. Uriel had, she corrected herself. This time they were the surprised party, and the men across from them looked serious and prepared for anything they might have come up with.
Uriel spoke. “Let the girl go.”
One of the men snorted. “I don’t think so Uriel. She’s the one we’re here for.”
The one-armed shifter’s head dipped. “Why are you doing this Ryan?”
Kierra gasped as she realized that Uriel knew the men facing them. They must be Sentinels, she realized.